


When Will My Reflection Be?

by Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Episode Fix-it, Gen, Headcanon, Introspection, Temporary Character Death, Unrequited Crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-25
Updated: 2014-12-25
Packaged: 2018-03-03 11:03:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2848574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw/pseuds/Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What's going on inside Osgood's head during Death in Heaven, and how she survives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When Will My Reflection Be?

**Author's Note:**

> This is basically me inflicting headcanons on the world: Osgood is too clever/awesome to get killed like that, and has a crush on her boss. 
> 
> Title, suggested by best beloved, is from Mulan.

Osgood isn't sure what the technical name is for UNIT's cooperation with the Jetsan Corporation. When it comes to the effect that it has on her enthusiasm for her job, she knows the correct term is “harshing her squee.” She isn't sure if this is more or less true given the fraction of their budget (and, consequently, her paycheck) Jetsan is contributing.

Still, there is an awful lot of squee to go around when one is testing programmable matter. They'd only gotten it to work on organic compounds so far, she laments as she takes off her glasses and lays them next to her inhaler atop the neatly-folded stack of spare clothes next to the tub of burbling, gluey liquid. “Commencing human trial one,” she announces to the recorder—audio only, thank you. She continues running through the checklist as she plugs herself into the neural interface. “Geronimo,” she says quietly as she pushes the last button...

...and wakes up naked in the tub. “Eureka!” she cries...

...just as her boss walks in. “Well done,” Kate Stewart tells her, looking over the experiment with a clinical eye as her duplicate flails for her inhaler. Having fantasized about this was one thing... “Get dressed; we've got an emergency. Level One.”

“Yes'm,” she manages hastily as Kate turns and leaves, blessedly quickly.

***

She sizes up the situation at once, the pattern-matching part of her brain working at hyperspeed. Not that there was such a thing as hyperspeed, but she prefers not to dwell on her internship with UNIT when she was sixteen. 

Cybermen, dozens of them. The Doctor, naturally. A woman. Demented, but obviously intelligent. Manipulative, especially of the Doctor. Proclivity for hare-brained schemes, often involving cooperation with other amoral entities. Hypothesis: the Master, in a female body. She has to work to subdue her smile as she walks towards the quarreling Time Lords (Time Lord and Time Lady?). She's heard stories of course, but to be front and center with two of Earth's deadliest foes? She fights the urge to take a comforting puff from her inhaler, and tries not to beam too idiotically as she offers to take a picture of the Doctor and the Master.

***

Osgood assumes that getting on the plane will probably kill her (or at least this body). It's really a miracle that she's lasted this long. She's read enough old mission logs and heard enough anecdotes from the lifers to get an idea of UNIT mortality rate. Getting on a plane with an insane Gallifreyan while the skies fill with Cybermen is basically playing Russian roulette without any empty chambers.

For all that, she steps aboard willingly. She wishes that other concerns had been uppermost in her mind—the chance to save lives, duty to country, or even scientific curiosity. But in the end, what makes her put one sneakered foot in front of the other is her devotion to her boss and the fact that she's grown up practically worshiping the Doctor. Her granddad had been a Sergeant and gotten out with all his limbs, but she'd gotten hooked on his stories to the point that she had hardly considered anything else.

At least it would be quick, she prays. And maybe, if she's very lucky, and there aren't any kinks in the system, she'll wake up six stories underground in a UNIT lab, plugged into a metal cage.

***

Her breath catches when the Doctor notices her. She almost orgasms with pride when he offers her a spot on the TARDIS. She's still riding the edge of that feeling when the Mistress calls to her. And so she overcompensates, forcing herself to be ultralogical. If she were free, she'd have done something by now, one voice tells her. She stalls for time, pretending to show interest when she mentions the Doctor. Very tempting, she admits. Or it would be if the Doctor hadn't already offered me everything I could want from him. She steps closer to the Mistress. You're already dead, one final voice reminds her. And maybe, just maybe, you'll learn something useful and won't get your neck snapped for your trouble. It's almost a comfort to learn, twenty seconds later, that the Mistress was already free, and the whole act to draw her in was just to fuck with her mind. But it doesn't make any sense! cries her last remaining thread of rationality just before the Mistress vaporizes her.

***

She wakes up, vision blurry with a splitting headache. Concussion? No, just missing her glasses and freshly zapped back into her original body. She hangs there, shuddering, for almost half an hour until her hands are steady enough to unfasten the straps, take out the IV keeping her hydrated, and remove the leads. She describes her symptoms for the benefit of the recorder. “Memory a bit hazy,” she concludes. She can deduce that she must have left in a fast enough hurry not to switch the damned thing off. Must have been an emergency.

“Hello?” she calls. Nobody there. Lights still on, which is about all she can tell without squinting. She's got a spare pair in her locker. If she can find her locker. Everyone's left. Must have been a terribly big emergency. She pats her pockets; the other her must have her phone, too. Memories start to filter back, and she gropes her way to the phone on the desk where she dials Kate's number from memory. “Ma'am?”

Between the two of them, they manage to piece together the afternoon's events. “Well, I suppose we start putting things back together,” Kate says, resigned. “Just another day.”


End file.
